31 Days Of Space: The Spooky Frontier – Kronos

A glowing light takes over a man who is driving a car out in the desert. The possessed man drives to a scientific outpost called Lab Central. The man busts into the place and finds Dr. Hubbell Eliot (John Emery). The light leaves the man, who drops dead, and enters Dr. Eliot.

Meanwhile Dr. Eliot’s colleagues Dr. Leslie Gaskell (Jeff Morrow) and Dr. Arnold Culver (George O’Hanlon) have been tracking what they believe to be an asteroid which suddenly changes course. Dr. Eliot confuses the men by telling them they are wrong. Dr. Gaskell orders the military to blast the object out of the sky. The object is hit and crashes into the ocean off of Mexico. Dr. Eliot suddenly collapses and is sent to the hospital while Dr. Gaskell, Dr. Gaskell’s girlfriend and assistant Vera Hunter (Barbara Lawrence) and Dr. Culver race to take a look at the object.The next morning on the beach where the spaceship crashed a giant robotic platform has emerged which the team has dubbed Kronos. Kronos walks in Mexico attacking power stations and draining the energy.

Meanwhile Dr. Eliot has revived and has gotten a hold of list of all the power stations and more to guide Kronos to. It seems that Dr. Eliot has been possessed by an alien from a dying planet. A planet that has had all of it’s resources drained and depleted. The alien and the robotic device now called Kronos are here to absorb all of Earth’s energy and then return home. The more energy Kronos absorbs the bigger it gets. Dr. Gaskell and Vera discover the startling truth about Dr. Eliot and try to stop the U.S. from firing a nuclear missile at Kronos but they are too late and the blast only fuels Kronos more. Can Dr. Gaskell figure out a way to stop Kronos?

This low budget sci-fi thriller followed in the wake of War of the Worlds success. The filmmakers decided to focus on resource over-conspumption as the means of the aliens motives which becomes more timely as the movie gets older. Director Kurt Neumann was a prolific director who made several Tarzan movies over the years but biggest movie was 1958’s The Fly. The effects are cheap looking, Kronos is mostly hand drawn animated but it’s still a decent little thriller.